Nanyang Technological University

My father got retrenched during the 2008 financial crisis. Well, formally, he was 'made redundant'. We have never had a stable family income since.

Around then, I decided that I was interested in the human capital space:

This interest has been at the heart of what I have done since.

 
My objectives: (1) To allow skilled volunteers to bring their best skills to social organizations; (2) help students / unemployed hone their skills on real life projects; and (3) help social organizations, especially with areas outside their core area of expertise

In year 3, a couple of friends and I created a ground up initiative called Skills for Good because we believed that volunteers could bring so much more to the table if they volunteer not just their time, but their best skills.

One year later, what started as a small pet project amongst friends has grown into a team of 30 core members, ~800 volunteers, 30 client organizations, and 60 projects across Singapore and Australia, including clients like Lions Befrienders, Breast Cancer Foundation etc. Collectively, our volunteers have invested more that 1000 hours of work for various social organizations.

Some projects we have done include:

To date, we have received a SGD3000 grant from the National Youth Council, which has been used to fund our operations.

We have also been featured on Youthtopia (https://youthopia.sg/read/university-students-start-initiative-to-use-their-skills-for-good-and-help-those-in-need/).

More information on our activities can be found on our website: https://www.skills-for-good.org/

 
My objectives: To support CareerSocius' mission to help as many job-seekers as possible in their job search

CareerSocius is a social enterprise that helps job-seekers in Singapore maximize their career potential by bringing their personal brand and career stories to life through various services, including resume writing, branding workshops etc.

I joined CareerSocius to help them streamline and improve their internal processes to best utilize limited resources and maximize social impact. They had a limited number of resume vetters that could support job-seekers, and this was a key constraint in scaling up the number of job-seekers they could help.

During my time there, I helped design a new process flow to simplify the resume vetting process and improve their efficiency.

 
My objectives: To support students in their job search

I have been volunteering as a student mentor for various initiatives over the years. Some memorable ones include:
2018 - 2019: Mentoring Edge, I taught Business Fundamentals
2020 – present: CAO, mentor for various mentoring initiatives, and on an ad-hoc basis
2018 – present: Business Solutions, mentor
I do this to give back to the school and my juniors, and help them reach their career potential.

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Lu Yi has always been passionate about giving back to the society since a young age. She started from volunteering in a nursing home during her secondary school years on a weekly basis to being on the leadership team for multiple initiatives and projects.  

Women Unbounded (Feb 2021 – present)

At the moment, Lu Yi is actively involved in an initiative for women’s empowerment: Women Unbounded. Women Unbounded is a volunteer-based community headquartered in Singapore, working for women's empowerment through connections, mutual aid, and ideas. WU is proudly feminist; the team’s approach to feminist activism is grounded in the beliefs in fairness, respect, and empiricism, and places commitment to intersectional feminism. One step at a time, the team works to break down psychological, intellectual, socio-cultural, and economic barriers to gender equality.

Being in the role of Deputy Head, Friend of WU, Lu Yi leads Women Unbounded's Connections Division. She connects Patrons looking for advice or mentorship related on anything relating to educational or professional pursuits with women in various professional and educational domains. By doing so, she aims to create a safe space for women to meet and seek career and educational knowledge and advice from other women.

Singtel International Group CSR (Jun 2020 - Dec 2020)

Lu Yi’s passion for volunteering extends outside of school activities, even taking the initiative to volunteer her time to participate in Singtel International Group’s Tingkat CSR initiative. Singtel’s very first project Happy Hood initiative, the team was located in a different hawker center around Singapore each week to guide hawkers and patrons on carrying out digital payments. In order to show support for Singapore’s unique hawker culture and encourage the use of contactless payments, the team created the Dash tingkat, a pastel, modern take to the humble tiffin, as a token to advocate digital efforts for the latest UNESCO cultural heritage. During the CSR initiative, she was able to interact with more than 1,400 patrons and communicate with them on the importance of digital literacy.

Grassroot Organization (GRO) (March 2021 - present)

Closer to home, Lu Yi is also a member of her local Grassroot Organization (GRO), as part of the Youth Network team. An integral part of the team is to organize workshops for the community of Bishan East-Sin Ming, ranging from legal clinics to media literacy projects. More notably during the COVID-19 pandemic, she has an increased focus on educating the elderly on modern technology. The sudden announcement of Circuit Breaker, SHNs has forced seniors to quickly adapt to the use of modern devices, including and not limited to the safe entry app everywhere they go and zoom calls to communicate with loved ones. Through mini clinics and personalized consultations, she is able to empower and ease the seniors into familiarize with the new technology. 

Till this day, Lu Yi is always on the lookout for meaningful causes that allows her to benefit the community and people around her. Her passion and interest in the various aspects of humanitarian work will allow her to build a strong foundation in understanding the impact of her actions and positively affect those around her.

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"We breathe, therefore we create" This quote by Erwin Raphael McManus resonates with me as a guiding principle in life. I believe in using the power of technology to make lives better. As an observant individual, I often see people throwing away useful items. There was also a lack of digital initiatives to resolve this problem.

In 2018, during my first year of university, I embarked on a mission to democratize upcycling, and my project - Sharetings is entirely driven by the desire to reduce unnecessary waste by making it convenient for people to upcycle their unwanted items through an online peer to peer platform. Recycling and donation drives can be inconvenient, but platforms like Sharetings lets you (upcycle) from your mobile, anytime, anywhere, 24/7.

With the help of several friends and volunteers, the Sharetings Telegram channel which allow users to list unwanted items for free through a five-step process quickly made waves.

As the platform continue to gain traction, I applied for various grants from several government agencies as I wanted to scale this up to a mobile application and implement gamification to nurture and grow the sharing culture in Singapore. Despite facing multiple rejections along the way, I pressed on and continue to believe what I believed it. Eventually, I managed to secure a few partnership which contributed to the success of Sharetings.

To date, the platform has over 8000 users and of these, over 70,000 items has been listed on Sharetings.

Milestones and Achievements:

Awards/Recognition:
Sembcorp Marine Green Wave Challenge 2nd Runner Up 2019
NEA Ecofriend Award 2020
HDB Lively Place Challenge 2021

Grants Secured:
NEA Call for Idea Funds : $18,000
South West CDC Eco Fund: $10,000
NTU Colab4 Good Social Enterprise Grant: $10,000

Media Coverage:
Straits Times: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/youth-join-fight-against-climate-change
Vulcan Post: https://vulcanpost.com/720426/sharetings-telegram-channel-singapore/
MOE: https://www.schoolbag.edu.sg/story/earth-friendly-freebies
South West CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov.sg/flipbook/southwest/2021/BridgeJanFeb2021/index.html#p=1
Minister Grace Fu's Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/gracefu.hy/posts/261328335352909

Activities in School:
Enactus NTU 2018/19: Project Leader
Social Impact Catalyst 2019/20: Vice President (Projects)
Social Impact Catalyst 2020/21: Project Leader

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Skills For Good, Co-Founder

In the heart of COVID-19, I co-founded a non-profit organisation called Skills For Good along with a couple of friends from NTU and SMU to help Social Organisations adapt to the new norm through digitization.

We found out that this was a significant problem for the social sector during a conversation with an executive from Breast Cancer Foundation. She mentioned that many social organisations conducted physical activities like befriending and workshops and with the circuit breaker and social distancing rules, this meant that all their activities had to come to a stop. At the same time, I realised that many of my friends had their internships cut short, or cancelled entirely and they were actively seeking for opportunities to hone their skills.

Therefore, Skills For Good was founded, to be a bridge of opportunities for passionate students to give back to the community anytime and anywhere, while honing their skill sets. In short, we wanted to (1) help our friends / peers find opportunities to practice their skills in real life projects (especially in a difficult job climate); and (2) help social organizations focus on what they do best - creating social impact - without worrying about digitalization, marketing, etc. By facilitating the free flow of volunteer talent into Singapore’s social sector, we hope to assist social organisations in capacity building, to help them work more effectively, expand their reach and impact, and further their missions.

To date, we have helped over 30 social organisations in Singapore, such as YMCA, Lions Befrienders and Bettr Barista for capacity building, bringing about cost savings and productivity increases. We have assisted SUNDAC and REACH with virtual fundraising, helped NuLife with Website Redesign and contributed to the development on online training materials for Campus Impact We managed to achieve this by mobilising over 150 skilled volunteers across 60 projects in Singapore and inspired many to volunteer for the first time. Some of our volunteers have also joined the clients’ social organisations and have been regularly volunteering in their own ways.

Achievements & mentions:

Project Leader & Assistant Director of Operations at Conjunct Consulting
I volunteered for 1.5 years under Conjunct Consulting, providing pro-bono consultancy services to non-profit organisations in Singapore such as Breast Cancer Foundation (BCF). I led a team of 6 to develop an impact assessment framework to better assess and improve BCF’s Healing through the Arts and Wig Loan programme. Insights generated from the framework allowed us to restructure BCF’s weekly programmes timeline and recommend the initiation of new activities which would aid in their emotional healing. This would go on to benefit up to 760 beneficiaries and BCF in the long-run would have an effective assessment tool to continuous evaluate their performance. Encouraged by the impact and output of our project, BCF returned to Conjunct Consulting for more of similar engagements.

Other volunteering activities:

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My volunteering journey began in Secondary School, when I first volunteered for organizations including MCCY, Mercy Relief and Social Creatives. During my two years in Secondary School, despite clocking more than 60 hours of volunteering, I felt that the impact that I had created was not enough and I wanted to go a step higher.

As I graduated from Secondary School and moved on to Junior College, I took up the role to be the Project Leader for Community Involvement Programs. During my two years in Junior College, I was privileged to be given the opportunity to organize two volunteering events – MY Big Sweep and Old but Gold. MY Big Sweep is an event jointly organized with MYMCA, where more than 30 student volunteers went to help elderly living in single-room HDB flats to clean their flats. Old but Gold took place the following year, where I created a whole-day event for more than 50 elderly to interact and play games with more than 30 of our student volunteers. Despite the fact that both events were considered successful, I still felt that the impact that I created was too little, too small for the community around me. Again, I wanted to go a step higher.

Then came university and during my first few years in university, I had no idea how I could serve the community around me using knowledge and skills that I previously never had – until I stumbled upon 180 Degrees Consulting online. Impressed by their outreach and reputation, I decided to start my own 180 Degrees Consulting branch here at NTU during the Covid-19 pandemic era, where numerous social organizations are adversely affected by the pandemic.

The goal of 180 Degrees Consulting is simple – to match students passionate about social impact with organizations who need strategy-related help at no cost.

At the core of the organization, we aim to:

Since it was first founded in October 2020, within a span of 8 months, we have completed/signed the following projects:

For the completed project, I was involved in the process from end-to-end, including client acquisition, recruitment of Consulting Directors and Consultants, and organize masterclasses for the Consultants. For signed projects, I was mainly involved in client acquisition and project scoping.

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